Even I find it hard to believe that its been fifteen years (2/27/1996) since the original release of "Pocket Monsters" in Japan--and around 13 years since I fell deeply into my "on-again, off-again" relationship with the series. I remember that even before I picked the game up I was watching the television show (my first episode was "Battle aboard the St. Anne", I saw it on a sick-day) and had an extensive (but not masterful) knowledge of the trading card game. I learned how to use the VCR's timed record function so I could tape and watch all of the episodes.
Hell before I had a gameboy of my own my little brother and I would role-play the game, taking turns being the game-master of the other's playthrough in not so different a way than how a dungeonmaster watches over a D&D game. Granted these gatherings were never fair--it was completely up to the current game-master's mood whether or not the player succeeded--and I remember keeping lists and lists of my Nidokings and Charizards while Josh's list was slave to scores upon scores of Rattata. Somewhere I still have our lists.
This is why all the Lapras are extinct...When we finally got our gameboys and took off with the game I would have to say that my knowledge of Pokemon was most likely greater than my knowledge of anything else in the universe. In early College I took up competitive battling and I don't QUITE remember where I keep the evidence of this--three or four notebooks completely filled with Breeding charts, training splits and damage calculations, weakness diagrams, battle critiques, flow charts, win/loss tables, graphs depicting how often I encountered Infernape set to Poisson Distribution... Were these fruitful? Hell yes, my team was 23-2 in the spring season of my junior year!...Was it worth it? Hm...
Where do you go after you reached the top once? Back to the start, but with less than you had before. I am coming out of retirement one last time not to reclaim my title, but to have some fun--like it was when I was younger.
I think that's what makes my Pokemon White Playthrough so Spectacular--I haven't done any pokemon in years and I'm rusty and out of touch with the game's subtleties. Even better--I have no prior knowledge of this game--nor the pokemon in it--barring the three starters you get to choose from--this playthrough will be FULL of surprises indeed!
As I play you will get a running commentary of my actions and the evolution of my squad of pokemon--with visual updates to both. I think you may even enjoy this as much as I hope I do!
So please--join me as I take my first steps--and follow me one last time into the spectacular world of pokemon.
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